Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears ? no relation to the well-known pop star ? also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.

So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?

Spears fell victim to the "Nigerian scam," which is familiar to almost anyone who has ever had an e-mail account.

The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble.

All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds though an untraceable wire service.

By this time, not many people will fall for such an outrageous pitch, and the scam is very well-known. But it persists, and for a reason: every now and then, it works.

For Spears, it started, as it almost always does, with an e-mail. It promised $20 million and in this case, the money was supposedly left behind by her grandfather (J.B. Spears), with whom the family had lost contact over the years.

"So that's what got me to believe it," she said.

Spears didn't know how the sender knew J.B. Spears' name and her relation to him, but her curiosity was piqued.

It turned out to be a lot of money up front, but it started with just $100.

The scammers ran Spears through the whole program. They said President Bush and FBI Director "Robert Muller" (their spelling) were in on the deal and needed her help.

They sent official-looking documents and certificates from the Bank of Nigeria and even from the United Nations. Her payment was "guaranteed."

Then the amount she would get jumped up to $26.6 million ? if she would just send $8,300. Spears sent the money.

More promises and teases of multi-millions followed, with each one dependent on her sending yet more money. Most of the missives were rife with misspellings.

When Spears began to doubt the scam, she got letters from the President of Nigeria, FBI Director Mueller, and President Bush. Terrorists could get the money if she did not help, Bush?s letter said. Spears continued to send funds. All the letters were fake, of course.

She wiped out her husband?s retirement account, mortgaged the house and took a lien out on the family car. Both were already paid for.

For more than two years, Spears sent tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Everyone she knew, including law enforcement officials, her family and bank officials, told her to stop, that it was all a scam. She persisted.

Spears said she kept sending money because the scammers kept telling her that the next payment would be the last one, that the big money was inbound. Spears said she became obsessed with getting paid.

An undercover investigator who worked on the case said greed helped blind Spears to the reality of the situation, which he called the worst example of the scam he?s ever seen.

He also said he has seen people become obsessed with the scam before. They are so desperate to recoup their losses with the big payout, they descend into a vicious cycle of sending money in hopes the false promises will turn out to be real.

Now, Spears has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim.

She hopes her story will warn others to listen to reason and avoid going down the dark tunnel of obsession that ended up costing her so much.

Spears said it would take her at least three to four years to dig out of the debt she ran up in pursuit of the non-existent pot of Nigerian gold.

i used to work in a bank and you would not believe how many people really fall for this especially older people or people who get their first accounts. well I have saved few of them from spending their money. This scam really works and these guys are using all kinds of creative measures, they have watermarked checks, official looking seals and so forth. Well those guys probably will not be arrested so let hope this lady wins a lottery or something.

this is a very sad story. there are a lot of people out there that are desperate for money. i think they pray that life throws them a break...and when they get these emails claiming they can get quick/easy money..they think this is the break they are praying for.

They are offered huge sums of money and all they have to do is pay a small fee. That's how it starts. Each subsequent step seems logical (to the mark) and by the time they are deeply in they need the money on offer to pay back the amount they've spent. So they go on, and on.

Yes, they are stupid, gullible, whatever - but some cons are so clever that it's very difficult to believe that they are cons.

Only $400,000, my story is far more than that, the guy is a real black hat guy

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- Germany's richest woman has said a former lover has threatened to release pictures of them together if she does not pay him millions of euros (dollars), according to her spokesman.

Susanne Klatten holds a 12.5-percent stake in BMW.

Susanne Klatten's spokesman Joerg Appelhans told CNN Tuesday that the BMW heiress alerted police in January this year that she was the victim of fraud and blackmail by a man he identified as Mr. S.

Appelhans said the man had been threatening since autumn 2007 to release pictures of their "meetings" together.

Klatten "came to the conclusion that the relationship with Mr. S. was of a solely criminal nature," Appelhans said. Some German media reports say Klatten is one of four rich German women who have been preyed on by the same gang.

"His goal was from the beginning to con her and to blackmail her into giving him money. She rigorously notified authorities even in light of the uncomfortable public repercussions this would have for her. The ensuing criminal investigation led to the arrest of the perpetrator," Appelhans added.

"The blackmailing with pictures of the meetings they had began in the fall of 2007. First, the blackmailer demanded a loan of several million euros. Later, he attempted to solicit a much larger sum."

Anton Winkler, from the Munich state prosecutor's office, confirmed that an investigation has been opened and that a man called Helg Scarbi was arrested in January and is in custody in Munich. He declined to give further details.

Rome daily La Repubblica, quoting documents German investigators sent to Italian prosecutors, has reported that the suspect allegedly tried to obtain ?40 million ($51 million) from Klatten, according to The Associated Press.

Klatten, the daughter of the late BMW chief Herbert Quandt, holds a 12.5-percent stake in the German carmaker and a 51.1-percent share of chemical company Altana.

In 2007 Forbes magazine listed her as the world's 68th richest person, with a personal fortune of $9.6 billion

I want to say she is pathetic but it is obvious she is an enabler...just look at what her occupation is...........thanks for the video. The video makes her look bad when everybody told her it's a scam. Maybe president bush should have told her

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